Can Lionsgate Cap Icahn Shares At 38%?

Welcome to the real-life game of Survivor: Wall Street. Lionsgate management tonight is trying to outwit, outplay, and outlast Carl Icahn before he effects a hostile takeover of the movie/TV studio for his son Brett. Lionsgate tonight announced it’s putting into place a “Shareholder Rights Plan” — i.e. a poison pill defense — to cap Icahn at 38% of its stock (he is currently at 37.9%) so he can’t do a “creeping bid” through open market purchases like he did today or private market transactions. “If he wants control of the Company, he should make a bid that is fair to all shareholders along the lines of a permitted bid described in the press release below,” a studio insider tells me.

Today, Icahn’s stake rose to 37.9%, or 44.8M shares, of Lionsgate. With 12+% more stock, he can become its majority stockholder. And then Lionsgate’s 12-member board, and the studio’s management team of Jon Feltheimer and Michael Burns, all have a target on their backs. Icahn’s $7 a share tender offer expired at midnight Wednesday, and left him with a 33.9% stake in Lionsgate. (Icahn Now Owns 33.9% Of Lionsgate) Today, he acquired an additional 4% more of the company by buying on the open market. Lionsgate’s immediate reaction was effectively to enact a poison pill defense. But it enacted a poison pill months ago — to prevent Icahn from accumulating over 20% of Lionsgate stock through his tender offer — and Canadian regulators nixed that measure. Can that happen again?

Here is tonight’s Lionsgate statement:

SANTA MONICA, Calif., and VANCOUVER, British Columbia, July 1, 2010 — Lionsgate (the “Company”) today announced that its Board of Directors has adopted a Shareholder Rights Plan that is designed to encourage the fair and equal treatment of Lionsgate’s shareholders in connection with any initiative to acquire effective control of the Company. (more…)